This post has been corrected. See details below. When the stage lights come up on the Stepping Stone Players' production of “Oliver!” Friday night, the show will have benefited from a $2,000 donation from the Walt Disney Co., after two of its employees were honored recently for volunteering hundreds of hours last year. Disney has a community service group that tracks how many hours employees volunteer, and it found that Kurt Sawitskas and April McCaffery logged more than 400 hours combined - most of it for the community theater troupe.

In Chinese, the word kung fu means skill through hard work. Heng Shuang Shi of the Chinese Shaolin Kung Fu Performance Troupe knows such work. He has studied kung fu for 11 years, honing his mental energy, or chi, to perform acts such as using his forehead to break a thin, heavy metal bar as part of the troupe's shows. Shi and the 25-member troupe from the Songshan Shaolin Monastery in China will perform a two-hour presentation at 7 p.m. on Saturday at the Alex Theatre. While this is the troupe's first trip to America, they've performed more than 100 presentations in Europe and China, said James Chu, an interpreter for the troupe's performers.

Theater company to take residence in new Pasadena venue that includes 45,000 square feet of space.GLENDALE -- The award-winning reparatory troupe A Noise Within will be packing up and moving to Pasadena, one of the troupe's founders confirmed Tuesday. Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, co-founder and co-director of A Noise Within, confirmed the troupe will move into the Sierra Madre project, a proposed multi-use project on the corner of Sierra Madre Villa Avenue and Foothill Boulevard in the East Pasadena Specific Plan.

Darleene Barrientos Verdugo Woodlands Elementary School students were inspired Wednesday with tales of creation and mythology. Students learned about the cultures of Scandinavia, Nicaragua and the Chumash Indians Wednesday through the performances of "We Tell Stories," a storytelling troupe that's part of the educational division of the Los Angeles Music Center, a county performing arts organization. The troupe tells interactive stories, employing some students as actors and actresses.

Danielle Cohen After a season marked by financial difficulties, those behind The Alex Theatre see the 2002-03 season as a turning point for the 77-year-old performing arts center. "Now we're focusing on where we'd like to see the theater go," Executive Director Barry McComb said. "We want to bring in more of a cross-section of performances that better represent the community we are in ... from a cultural standpoint. "The ultimate goal for the theater would be to have something for every resident to step foot into The Alex Theatre at least once a year," McComb said.

Jackson Bell SOUTHEAST GLENDALE -- Cerritos Elementary School third-graders got to spend Thursday morning playing house with Glendale firefighters. But the fun outing away from regular classwork was more than just playtime. The firefighters, and actors from L.A. Troupe, taught students fire safety using an interactive play and the Kids Safety Trailer. The trailer, styled as a miniature home used to practice fire emergencies and safety, is a donation from the Children's Burn Foundation in Sherman Oaks and shared by the Glendale, Burbank and Pasadena fire departments.

Jackson Bell Heather Blackstone is a First United Methodist Church of Glendale pastor by day and Middle Eastern-style belly dancer by night. As an assistant pastor for the Kenwood Street church, Blackstone leads sermons geared toward younger congregants. But during her off hours, the 29-year-old preacher dresses in ornate costume and belly dances to Middle Eastern music with Los Angeles-based dance troupe, the Flowers of the Desert. "It's a good balance," she said.

Karen S. Kim Members of the La Crescenta Women's Club Juniors were given a chance to shake, shimmy and groove Monday night during a lesson from local belly dancing troupe Leela with SalomeJihad. Six members of the group, including founder Marla Martin and her daughter, Valentina, taught the women's club the basics of belly dancing after giving a performance. The lesson and entertainment highlighted a regular meeting of the juniors at the La Crescenta Women's Club, 4004 La Crescenta Ave. Leela with SalomeJihad teaches classes each week in the Glendale and Montrose area.

A young Chinese woman in a red-and-gold body suit balanced a flower pot on her head while standing on her hands and pinning both ankles behind her ears. "Ow, that's got to hurt," said Andrew Reyes, 13, an eighth-grader at Glendale's Incarnation Catholic School. "Does she even have any bones in her body?" In honor of upcoming International Day, about 300 students gathered in the school auditorium to watch the Fabulous Chinese Acrobats, a four-member troupe from Beijing, juggle, balance and spin various objects.

This post has been corrected. See details below. When the stage lights come up on the Stepping Stone Players' production of “Oliver!” Friday night, the show will have benefited from a $2,000 donation from the Walt Disney Co., after two of its employees were honored recently for volunteering hundreds of hours last year. Disney has a community service group that tracks how many hours employees volunteer, and it found that Kurt Sawitskas and April McCaffery logged more than 400 hours combined - most of it for the community theater troupe.

Next week's return of Celebrate Dance to the Alex Theatre in Glendale will bring several themes to the stage - healing through dance, the importance of family and maintaining individuality - while gathering eight gifted dance companies from across the Greater Los Angeles area. Among the five companies making their Celebrate Dance debuts March 9 will be Nickerson-Rossi Dance, performing the Los Angeles premiere of “Enkindled.” The piece was born out of company artistic director Michael Nickerson-Rossi's desire to tell the story of how dance influenced and helped him, and his introduction into the community of dance.

It is pitch black. Slowly a dark reddish glow lights the stage. A slim woman dressed in tight black shorts and a loose tank top walks out and, chest forward, dives to the floor, landing on her hands. She lies on her side, knees bent, and slowly rolls onto her back. She raises an arm, her fist clenched, and curls into a fetal pose on her knees. As she quickly rises, looks up and reaches out … it is as if she were being born. Or perhaps it is the memory of her birth. That is what dancer Lydia Zimmer says is the basis of “Memoriae,” a structured improvisation that played at Live Arts Los Angeles in November as part of the “Transient Truths, a collaborative dance show” - memory within the human body.

The everyday and ordinary don't apply in the world of Theatre Movement Bazaar. One of L.A.'s most unusual performance companies, TMB has been wowing audiences here with haunting, humorous and often startling mash-ups of theater and dance, dialogue, music and multimedia since it moved here from New York in 1999. The company's newest work, “The Treatment,” based by TMB founders Tina Kronis and Richard Alger on Anton Chekhov's short story, “Ward 6,” will be presented in collaboration with Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena, where the world premiere piece opens on Feb. 25. Directed and choreographed by Kronis, with text by Alger, “The Treatment” explores the line between sanity and insanity, when a doctor in charge of a derelict mental hospital disrupts the societal status quo by engaging in philosophical conversations with an inmate.

Pasadena Playhouse had a rough 2010, but executives with the venerable theater group have shed long-standing financial burdens and are looking ahead to the launch of the 2011-12 season Sept. 16. In February 2010, the 94-year-old organization closed its theater doors after staging just one of its planned productions. In May, the playhouse filed for bankruptcy. It had $102,000 in cash and savings, but owed more than $2.3 million to creditors. The company planned to restructure and emerge from bankruptcy within two months.

San Pedro theater troupe Shakespeare by the Sea concluded its summer in Farnsworth Park Sunday night with the Bard's comedy of love and misunderstandings, "Much Ado About Nothing. " For more photos, go to Altadenablog.com

While officials seek to transform a section of downtown Glendale into an arts and entertainment district, the local theater scene is slowly turning into a tragedy. Citing weak ticket sales, Glendale Centre Theatre representatives say they may draw the curtains for good after 63 years. A Noise Within, an esteemed theater troupe that has performed at the Masonic Temple on Brand Boulevard for roughly 17 years, will offer its final Glendale performances in early June before moving to Pasadena.

Nick Dalton-Pawle, an actor with the educational theater company L.A. Troupe, says fire education should begin at a young age. Dalton-Pawle and his wife, Conie, presented a 30-minute sketch as the duo Inspector Danger and Wonder to second- and third-graders at La Crescenta Elementary School. The presentations, which are given throughout the district, are sponsored by the Glendale Fire Department, Glendale-based Quest for Burn Survivors and Children’s Burn Foundation in Van Nuys.

Dance and music ignited in vivid colors, fire, pure sensuality and erotica in the “Arabian Summer with Kaya & Sadie.” The description sounds like a scene out of some future episode of HBO’s hit series “True Blood” or maybe a show on the Las Vegas strip. But no, it was right in the middle of Brand Boulevard in Glendale on Sunday night. Leela’s “Arabia Exotica” Belly Dance Fantasy Theater turned up the heat on the stage of the Beyond the Stars Palace, and those in the audience were quite captivated by an experience filled with fantasy, theater, dance and mysticism.